Castle in the Desert

Charlie Chan, with his son Jimmy on a week’s leave from the army, is called out to a castle of a house in the middle of the Mojave Desert. A reclusive historian lives there with his wife, said to be descended from Lucrezia Borgia. Once they arrive nobody admits to having sent for them, but one houseguest has already been murdered and the rest are at each other’s throats. Harry Lachman directed and it opened on 27 February 1942. This has to be said: Sidney Toler, who played the Chinese detective, was a white American actor and this was his eleventh Chan film, while his son Jimmy was played by the Chinese American actor Victor Sen Yung. It is the last of the series made at Fox; the series then continued at Monogram on far smaller means.